Renaissance Man (episode)
The Doctor must become a master of disguise to save Captain Janeway. Summary The Doctor sings Questa o quella very loudly with the full orchestral music accompaniment playing as he steers the Delta Flyer. This is much to disgruntlement of Captain Janeway, who was trying to sleep in the aft compartment, though she conveniently shrugs it off with a replicator giving her a cup of black coffee when she emerges. :* They discuss The Doctor's many abilities and how he is capable of much more than a common Human because he is a hologram, and so is not bound to many of the physical restrictions an organic form is subject to. They also briefly converse that he and the captain rarely spend any time together, and that they should make a note of doing so sometime in the future. Janeway then contacts Voyager using the Flyer's deflector instead of its transciever array, telling Ensign Kim that it was damaged. She describes an attack by aliens and states that The Doctor is fine. She asks Kim to notify Chakotay to meet with her once she has docked. In her ready room, Janeway tells Chakotay about the attack, stating that a technologically superior race, the R'kaal, were the cause of the damage to the Flyer, and that they almost didn't make it back. Apparently, Voyager had unwittingly been traveling through their space for three weeks, in violation of their laws. She described how the R'kaal were ecological extremists, believing that traditional warp drive damages the fabric of space. They wanted to destroy Voyager with their cloaked fleet, but Janeway convinced them to allow them to settle on an M-class planet in exchange for surrendering their warp core. Chakotay attempts to protest, but Janeway says that she is tired of their long journey and its perils. She also tells Chakotay to not discuss it with anyone. She orders him to set course for the nearest planet and dismisses him before he can protest further. Chakotay then goes to sickbay and asks The Doctor if anything was wrong with Janeway's health, but The Doctor says there was not. Chakotay does get him to agree to examine Janeway in her quarters, and then departs for Astrometrics. Simultaneously, Janeway goes to Engineering and asks B'Elanna to make modifications to the Flyer's tractor beam so it can safely tow a warp core. After Janeway leaves, B'Elanna pages Chakotay to tell him about it. In Astrometrics, he asks Seven of Nine to attempt to detect any cloaked ships in the area. While there, Kim calls for him and says a transmission is coming through. Once on the screen, a Supreme Archon Loth demands to know when Voyager will surrender its warp core. Chakotay stalls by saying they can't do it until they have reached the planet they are heading for. Loth gives an deadline of 10 hours before the ship will be destroyed. On the bridge, Chakotay asks Janeway about the modifications and wonders why she told B'Elanna about their situation. After seeming to talk to herself, she states that she doesn't feel well and leaves for her quarters. After The Doctor tells Chakotay that Janeway is in perfect health, he goes to her quarters to see her, but she is not there. He calls for her on his combadge, but just then she comes around the corridor. In her quarters, they debate the necessity of their current cirumstances, and Chakotay mentions a mission at Lessek Prime where Janeway saved an away team by disobeying her captain's orders. After Janeway says that the sitations are totally different, Chakotay said that he made the whole thing up and attempts to call Security, since Janeway is apparently an impostor. "Janeway", however, placed a dampening field around the room to block his call. After a brief scuffle, she injects Chakotay with a hypospray, making him unconscious. "Janeway" then transports Chakotay's body to the morgue where she hides it. She then goes to sickbay and puts a foot up on a desk where the mobile emitter can be seen on her ankle. She then reveals herself to be The Doctor. The captain is taken hostage by Hierarchy renegades before they manage to return to . In an attempt to free the captain, The Doctor assumes the identity of various members of the Voyager crew, and, disguised as Chakotay, activates his Emergency Command Hologram subroutines so that he can eject the warp core and use it as ransom for the captain. When he arrives at the kidnappers' ship, they change plans and take him hostage, too, intending that he infiltrate a Hierarchy base to steal data. :"Chief Tactical Officer's log, stardate 54890.7. With internal sensors offline I have had to order a section by section search for our missing crewmembers. Until main power is restored Voyager remains immobilized and defenseless." The Doctor does leave a clue for the crew so that they will be able to track the alien ship's warp signature. He reprogrammed the computer to begin playing the musical piece The Blue Danube on every com channel of the ship when they reactivate the impulse reactors. The recording is flawed, however, and several of the notes are played off key. The crew realizes that The Doctor had played the piece flawlessly a month earlier during a recital and that the alterations must be deliberate on his part. They analyze the music and discover that the off-key notes are actually a warp signature embedded within the music, which allows them to track the aliens. :* When Tuvok and Paris get to the alien ship in another shuttle, a fight occurs and with help of one of the aliens, Janeway and The Doctor are able to regain the warp core and escape. However, The Doctor's program begins to destabilize as the result of a large amount of data which the two aliens added as part of their plan to have him steal data from a Hierarchy base. Believing he will not survive, he makes a bit of a deathbed confession, including, among other things, that he told Neelix about a time when Tuvok had a particularly bad rash, and that he is in love with Seven of Nine. He does survive, however. :"Captain's log, stardate 54912.4. Lieutenant Torres has restored our warp drive in less than a week. The Doctor's dignity, however, might take a little longer. He hasn't left sickbay once since he returned to the ship." Background Information * Ethan Phillips (Neelix) does not appear in this episode. He left Voyager in , the previous episode. However, he is mentioned in dialog by The Doctor and in the Opening Credits. * This is the first live action Star Trek spin-off to have a penultimate episode not directed by the main star. Patrick Stewart directed TNG's penultimate episode and Avery Brooks directed DS9's penultimate episode . * This episode is similar to episodes , and , in that it features one of the regular characters apparently turning on the others and running rampant on a quest whose purpose only becomes understandable in the end. * Andy Milder (Nar) previously played the Bolian Boq'ta in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode . * This episode marks the last appearance of Alexander Enberg as Vorik on the show. * The Delta Flyer II is also seen for the last time in this episode. * This episode was aired shortly after the death of Douglas Adams, the writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books. Possibly as an homage, an alien species is described as "mostly harmless" in this episode, which was how Earth was described in Adams's books. Additionally, the doctor's command code to eject the warp core is "ECH-omega-four-two", a reference to 42, Douglas Adams's answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything. * A production error occurs in the scene where Harry Kim contacts Doc-as-Chakotay in astrometrics: Kim's voice does not carry the usual comm channel "phone-tone" even though he is calling from the bridge. * Although crewmen Ayala has been seen in nearly every episode during Voyager's seven seasons, he was rarely ever given dialog. During the entire run of the series Tarik Ergin only ever had a few lines of dialog, this episode features him speaking while stationed at the helm. * The piece The Doctor is singing at the beginning of the episode is Questa o quella and the piece of piano music he later encodes was The Blue Danube. Video and DVD releases *UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment): Volume 7.12, . *As part of the VOY Season 7 DVD collection. Links and References Guest Star *Alexander Enberg as Vorik Co-Stars *Andy Milder as Nar *Wayne Thomas Yorke as Zet *David Sparrow as Alien/Doctor *Tarik Ergin as Tactical N.D. *J.R. Quinonez as Overlooker/Doctor * Majel Barrett as Computer Voice References Ayala; auto-regenerative shielding; Beta Quadrant; bio-neural gel pack; The Blue Danube; Buenos Aires; class 1 overseer; coffee; Delta Flyer; deuterium; Eblar Prime; Emergency Command Hologram; Fourier analysis; fried chicken; Hierarchy; mobile emitter; Mutara class; paprika; polaron; polydeutonic alloy; potato salad; R'kaal; sickbay; Supreme Archon; targ; tractor beam; transceiver array; transphasic warp drive; type-9 shuttlecraft; Vinri system; warp core; warp core ejection system; Lessek Prime |next= }} Category: VOY episodes de:Renaissance Mensch fr:Renaissance Man nl:Renaissance Man